Jolla, are we ever going to get better native PIM apps?

asked 2015-09-02 00:27:30 +0300

cfgardiner gravatar image

updated 2017-10-07 22:39:32 +0300

olf gravatar image

I installed 1.1.7.28 and after the long wait I find it rather disappointing. From the "pure" Sailfish perspective, I haven't noticed any mentionable improvements yet. Even in the release notes, the main headline seems to be "better Android support", which doesn't interest me in the least. Yeah, I can see from the questions that lots of users love their Android stuff but if that was Jolla's main goal then why not just do an Android fork from the very beginning?

I've been barking about the ludicrously primitive native calender app for two years now (well, it feels like two years) and again not the slightest improvement seems to have been made. For me, a screen with just 42 numbers and the word "today" might just as well be a lotto ticket.

I've made a few suggestion for improvements in the past. Any chance of getting at least one by Sailfish 2.0? - If you still want your no-frills calender because its "Jolla like", then can it at least be made configurable for those less impressed with artists putting a yellow dot on a black background and calling it Sunrise? Guess what's the one native PIM app you can't configure at all in App Settings? Right, ..... t h e c a l e n d e r !

  • Suggested Options:
  • adding Month, year and week-day across the top. Useful if your jumping through months planning training schedules for instance
  • display calender-week number if you turn to landscape. (N9 does that, Jolla Calender does nothing, it doesn't even change to landscape)
  • provide a pulley item allowing to jump to a particular date, even if its years away
  • Highlight a configurable column (so that atheists, buddhists, christians, hindus, jews, klingons, muslims, vogons (not meaning to be offensive, just alphabetic) can chose their favorite week day)

OK. That's my rant for the moment. Still hoping to get better native PIMs on the new tablet/Sailfish 2 which I hope will get more use than my Jolla phone. With the playground PIM I'm still stuck with my N9. I even have a spare unused N9/64GB in my desk just in case my main one dies.

edit retag flag offensive close delete

Comments

11

a screen with just 42 numbers and the word "today" might just as well be a lotto ticket

artists putting a yellow dot on a black background and calling it Sunrise

atheists, christians, jews, klingons, muslims, vogons (not meaning to be offensive, just alphabetic)

I LOL'd hard, nice to read a clever and snarky post for a change. Oh, and also I couldn't agree more with you and wish I could upvote more than once. Almost two years, and the calendar is still a joke.

ScumCoder ( 2015-09-02 00:40:44 +0300 )edit

I don't either see many improvements after update. For a developer perspective the gcc4.8 is though a big improvement and is possibly helping to integrate more up to date software to jolla in future updates.

Rikujolla ( 2015-09-02 06:36:23 +0300 )edit
3

Pleasantly written post indeed. All these rants could be easily integrated upstream by the community and not only with patch manager (as an example, I've implemented several small feature requests wrt sailfish-office and I guess that it helps devs at Jolla to concentrate at something else) if the application would be relicenced as open source. Please vote there : https://together.jolla.com/question/58459/source-code-of-calender-app/

I've had the feeling during previous SFOS community meetings that Jolla was a bit disappointed by the lack of community involvement in the open source UI apps already released (browser, document and utilities). That was true one year ago for several reasons (the browser is a complex piece of software and the document app was not very popular). But things have changed and valuable contributions done : private mode in the browser, password encrypted PDF, search in document list are now good examples. So we should show them that the community has ideas and time for some other non critical UI apps (like calculator, calendar…).

Damien Caliste ( 2015-09-02 10:32:38 +0300 )edit
8

I'm not sure I would call the Calendar "non critical" - for me, it's one of the most important apps on the phone (especially if CalDav synching works), and I don't think I'm alone with that opinion...

dyraig ( 2015-09-02 11:48:49 +0300 )edit

Sorry, my explanation was not clear. Not critical in terms of business plan for Jolla, not from a user point of view. Of course, pdf viewer, browser, calendar or calculator are mandatory and essential apps for users. In my opinion, there is no added value from Jolla in all the previously cited softwares. They are not something that they can sell standalone. That's why I said non critical softwares (for them).

Damien Caliste ( 2015-09-02 16:04:44 +0300 )edit